If you’ve never meditated at work before, now is the time to escape all the distractions that come with work and find a quiet space.
Wired Magazine has just published an in-depth piece focusing on the increasing adoption of mindfulness and meditation within the corridors of the most influential Silicon Valley corporations.
Tech companies are using the practices to hone their employees’ focus and attention to increase productivity and wellbeing in the workplace.
It is a long but interesting read – I would allow 10 minutes of mindful, focused attention! It is especially useful for readers who are new to the idea of Digital Mindfulness, but also charts the influence that meditation is currently enjoying among the most powerful technology companies.
Interestingly, the article notes that although the meditation techniques draw on Eastern religious traditions, they are not necessarily religious practice. instead, they are seen as secular exercises designed to train the brain, enhance focus and attention, while developing emotional intelligence and productivity.
Google’s Search Inside Yourself mindfulness course, which has been completed by more than a thousand Googlers, is an excellent example of this.
Search Inside Yourself was established to help employees to more effectively manage their emotions over the long-term by practising mindfulness meditation. Google workers’ enhanced attention, awareness and focus helped them to increase productive output and improve the quality of their work.
But senior staff at Fortune 100 companies are not only developing a serious interest in the use of mindfulness-based techniques for the well-being of their employees.
They are also attempting to incorporate the principles of mindfulness into their technologies as a means of improving our experiences with the services.
Facebook’s recent move to incorporate emotions on their posts, for example, gives users the opportunity to inform others of how they are feeling at any given time to minimise misinterpretation of posts.
Facebook is still a major distrac…(hang on, I have a friend request to deal with; brb)…but these moves towards ancient mindfulness techniques and meditative practices by the technology companies that create our cutting edge digital tools is further evidence of an idea that has been percolating within the IT community.